Tapping To Heal Emotional Pain & Regain Joy with Nick Ortner – #2

0:27 Charlene Lincoln: I’m really excited because today we have a very special guest. His name is Nick Ortner and he is from The Tapping Solution. And so, you know, Nick, I’m a huge fan and when I reached out to you, I wasn’t sure if you were going to write back. I know you have a ton of things on your plate but you kind of quickly got back to me and it really touches my heart. You said, “I’m really busy right now,” and you had a book coming out but you said that you have a lot of people who were close to your heart who are dealing with fertility issues and so you felt like if you could help, you were definitely going to. So bless you, you’re a generous soul and I’m really excited to have you on because I know that you can really benefit our audience.

So I want to tell our audience a little bit about you, if they’re not familiar. Nick Ortner is the CEO of The Tapping Solution, a company with a mission to bring into the mainstream a simple, effective, natural healing method known as Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) or “Tapping.”

Tapping is a healing modality that combines ancient Chinese acupressure and modern psychology. Nick’s goal is to empower people to create healthy, abundant and stress-free lives through his books, films, CDs, online events and speaking engagements attended by participants from all around the world.

He is the New York Times bestselling author of “The Tapping Solution” and “The Tapping Solution for Pain Relief”. Nick created and produced the breakthrough documentary film “The Tapping Solution,” which follows ten people who used tapping to overcome significant challenges. Nick’s books and film document real and extraordinary results that have inspired tens of thousands to follow suit by successfully applying tapping to their lives.

Nick has also produced first-of-their-kind online programs that teach easy, effective ways to apply tapping to anything limiting a person’s life or health. Some noteworthy examples are: The “Tapping World Summit,” and it’s a free, annual worldwide online event that has been attended by over 1,000,000 people and Nick’s popular seven-week EFT coaching programs, which cover common issues such as financial abundance, weight loss and more.

He is an active board member of The National Institute of Integrative Healthcare and Jesse Lewis Choose Love Foundation. Nick and the Tapping Solution team are committed to spreading tapping throughout the world, and particularly to supporting its revolutionary and life-changing usage. They’ve raised over $1,000,000 for tapping-related charities such as Project Light, which aids genocide orphans in Rwanda, Africa, The Veterans Stress Project, supporting veterans with PTSD, and You Can Thrive! a New York organization providing services for women with cancer, and The Tapping Solution Foundation, that Nick started in 2013 to support the community of Newtown, CT after the tragic shootings… oh, that still tears me up when I say that. I’m sorry. I tapped on that before because when I say Sandy Hook, it just tears me up. But anyways, you live in Newtown so you are right there.

That was quite a bio. You’re a busy guy.

Nick Ortner: I’ll just say we got to shorten that bio.

4:00 CL: Yeah, yeah. I did take a couple things out so that’s how much you’re doing. And you do live in Newtown, Connecticut with your wife Brenna and daughter June. And she is, what, two years old?

NO: Yes. She is 2 ½ now.

4:12 CL: Oh, awesome. The terrific twos, I like to call it.

NO: Yes, exactly. I like that, I like that.

4:23 CL: Tapping and EFT has been around a long time. I know you have a real estate background and you kind of took this technique and I guess you saw the powerful potential of it and that literally it could be taught easily and everyone is dealing with their own traumas, whatever they are and that they could utilize this tool and so you really ran with it. Right? I mean, with your documentary and everything that you’re doing.

NO: Certainly, and it started with that initial passion; started with the documentary film and using tapping with myself. I wasn’t a practitioner, I wasn’t in the field. I was just blown away by the results time and again, that I would use it with friends and family. The running joke at the time was “don’t say anything is wrong around Nick because he’s going to make you tap on it.” I looked around and as we see it in our lives and the people suffering and the people in pain and then say, “Hey, let’s keep trying this tapping thing.”

And time and again, and to this day time and again, I’m blown away by the results. It doesn’t get old ever. I mean, I was on a Facebook Live, I guested on somebody else’s page this past week and there was someone with a migraine at a level 10 and by the time we were done 20 minutes later, her migraine was gone. And that is still just as shocking today as it was 10 years ago.

5:50 CL: Right, right, right. You never get used to “Oh! That happens.” You’re just like, “Wow!” The applications are endless.

NO: Yeah. Every time I’m like, “Yeah! Oh, it worked again?” I think there’s a part of me that always thinks that it will just stop at some point. Because it’s like, “What do you mean it worked again on this, you know, that and the other?” You know, so many places in our lives.

What the latest research is showing for those of you hearing tapping and maybe not being familiar, the general term is “tapping” because we are physically literally and if you’re listening to the podcast, I am physically tapping on these endpoints of meridians on our body. What the latest research is showing is that when we do that, we send a cosmic signal to the amygdala from the brain. We are turning off that fight or flight response in essence.

I believe that just about everything in our lives, our biggest challenges have at their core in some piece of it, not all of it, but some piece that’s stress response. Something happens to us, it gets encoded in our brain and we make a decision about the world, about life and we feel fear and anxiety and we keep running that fight or flight response. It affects our health. Cortisol levels shoot up, that’s how we put on belly fat, that’s how we don’t heal, that’s how inflammation skyrockets. It affects our relationships. We don’t have the presence to communicate and speak clearly and be our best selves.

It affects our finances. You mentioned my background in real estate and these old patterns that I had where I would have “boom or bust”. Things either went great or they would fall apart. Those were just patterns. Yes, there are circumstances and we can always point out as circumstances, but the journey for me what I find most empowering about life is when we go, okay, what can I do to take responsibility to help myself heal? And take responsibility from a place of compassion, not a place of guilt, not a place of shame. We’re not saying, “oh, let’s take responsibility” which means that “if I’m not getting pregnant, it’s my fault.” Like, “if this is happening with my body, it’s my fault.” No. We’re taking responsibility because it feels good to take responsibility.

8:01 CL: Empowering.

NO: It feels good to be empowered. To know that we can’t control everything in our lives but to say okay, for the places where I can’t control something in my life, what can I do in this moment to take some of that power back? Frankly, especially when it comes to health, any health challenges – fertility, anything where it’s our physical bodies and we’re going to outside sources for information and advice and care, it can feel so disempowering where we’re at the whim of what that next report is going to say. We’re at the whim of a diagnosis or a prognosis. And again, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t do these things, I’m not saying they’re not part of the journey, but what can we do to take that power back? What can we do to calm the body, the mind, and the spirit? That’s when the real healing happens.

8:52 CL: You know what, I speak to mostly women who are dealing with fertility issues and a lot of them saying and I don’t know if it’s like they’re classified as kind of type A personalities but they say, “I’m able to control everything in my life and this is one thing I feel I have no control over.” So I love that you brought up tapping because it brings back that sense of empowerment to our lives. And we really can’t control. We’re sort of vulnerable creatures in this world.

NO: One hundred percent. And sometimes the lesson is, yes, be empowered but sometimes the lesson in these life journeys are to release and control. This is what I love about tapping. When we calm that fight or flight response, when we calm the amygdala, when we get into that present, full mind state, that’s when the lessons really come in. That’s when we decide, “You know what, it’s the right time.” Or, “I need to allow this to be…” Or, “I need to relax around the issue.” Or, “I need to make a different choice.”

Sometimes we have these insights when we are stressed. When that fight or flight response is happening, we are literally dumber. The blood flows away from our brain into our arms and legs. We think we’re under attack. That happens once and then it happens again and again. It happens on one issue and you’re struggling to get pregnant and then you’re stressed out at work and then you’re stressed out in your relationship. And all of this compounds so you don’t have the insights to go, “Huh. What if I did this differently?” or, “What if I went and talked to that doctor that has a different opinion or that naturopath or that healer?” Whatever it is for your journey. What if I have that herb or that drug or that supplement? Whatever it is that might take you further along that path.

10:44 CL: It sounds like you’re talking about when you kind of clean that clutter out of your mind, calm things down that you can tap more into the intuition. Right?

NO: One hundred percent.

10:53 CL: And then we’re guided into certain things. And they talk more about those neural pathways, like thought processes that we have over and over again, just kind of like building canals in the brain. I mean, it seems like we’re just sort of wired to go into that fight or flight response because that’s the pattern we’re so used to.

NO: It is. And actually, it is physically wired into our brain. Our ancestors were very negative people with good reason. Right? Where if they weren’t negative, if they didn’t look for that tiger or that bear or that lion, they got eaten. So all the happy, positive people got eaten; we’re the leftovers. And that’s okay and it’s good to recognize that to say, “you know what, this is my brain doing this.” It’s also often a safety mechanism. We think the negative because we’re trying to foresee the outcomes like “okay, so let me think all the…” I mean, how many times have we all done this in all aspects of our lives? Let me think about the 20 negative things that might go wrong in this situation because if I think them through, then I can control them and prevent them. Are there scenarios where it serves? Yeah, okay, let me think through the scenario, etc.

The problem is when we run it again and again. Then when those scenarios and that thinking comes with fear and anxiety. I certainly know with friends and family members who have struggled to get pregnant or had miscarriages, like, the second there is a “failure” in that journey, and you see it happen. I’ve talked to friends where it happens immediately. It’s like they try to get pregnant and in the second month, they’re already upset. They don’t have that patience or understanding.

Well then that fear starts activating and the brain starts going, “Oh well, what if I don’t get pregnant? What if this happens? What if that happens?” Or, “The last time I got pregnant, it didn’t work out.” So we have these thoughts and with it comes that fear, the anxiety, the stress. Certainly, that as we well know is not serving the pregnancy. It’s not serving the attempt for the pregnancy. It’s understandable but if we can find that peace in our bodies, then everything is going to go better.

13:02 CL: I really want our audience to understand. It does not feel good obviously to be stressed and some of us, it’s almost like we feel like we’re wired that way. We just walk and we don’t even know the difference. But once we relieve that stress and we feel calmer, it feels good, the world is a better place but also, all these stress hormones, unfortunately, they’re hard on the adrenals, the endocrine system, the hormonal system and that does really affect fertility.

So the physiology of the body and the mind are not separated in this. So that’s why it’s so important. Like, we want you to feel better. We want you to have a happy calm life but also it’s affecting your fertility and it’s affecting your sleep and affecting your relationship with your spouse. And already people feel like, “Oh, the sex is so mechanical and we’re both kind of shutting down.” We don’t want that to happen. You need to be on the same page, on the same team.

NO: Yeah. Look, if the body is stressed, like you said, fertility, I mean again, think about our ancestors. The body, if it’s in a chronically stressed state, does that feel like a safe environment to try to create a child, to try to put all these resources in? Step one in whatever and however you do it, I think you’ll find today if you tap along with us, we’re going to have an experience how powerful it is and how much it calms your body. But if you take anything from our conversation today is step one is finding some peace in your body and your heart and lowering that stress level. Before you do anything else. That is the baseline, that is the foundation for anything else you want to do. And I believe it will have one of the most dramatic differences in your journey.

14:49 CL: This is what I love about tapping and our conversation because if we were to say to an audience of stressed out women and couples who are dealing with fertility issues, you just need to relax and take some deep breaths. It’s like, “yeah, thanks a lot.” You know, get better sleep. But I mean, we’re kind of agitating the issue, these are all the things that are happening, but we’re giving a solution. I mean this is really a solution.

I was introduced to tapping years ago. I had a huge issue. And the person who introduced me to a therapist, I thought, “Are you kidding? I just told you what a huge issue I was having.” I mean, I’m an acupuncturist so it’s not like this kind of stuff is crazy to me. But I thought that seems kind of basic to deal with it. But I was so desperate, I did it. And then over the last 15 years, so many applications. From dealing with just panic attacks to dealing with claustrophobic situations to deep trauma with clients, I mean, so many applications that it could be used for and that’s why I felt like 7 million couples are dealing with infertility in this country and they say it’s so isolating. But even within the relationship there’s private conversations that are happening for the man and the woman because one person feels to blame, the other person feels helpless.

And I dealt with fertility issues. I became a first-time mom at 42 and I thought if I can’t get pregnant, I mean, we’re going to talk about negative statements and why we say the negative statements, but the negative statements in my head were “I don’t know if my marriage is going to survive this and my husband could easily find someone else.” If it came down to that and if I literally just couldn’t, I waited too long or whatever, and so kind of these dark conversations, long nights of the soul happen. And if I didn’t have tapping, I would have just been stuck – stuck in that kind of pattern. So, here we are and we’re going to give you a solution to it.

Now, a question. There’s many reasons that people have been diagnosed with different conditions and sometimes it’s “unexplained infertility”. When you use tapping, is it important to tap on a specific condition?

NO: Great question. You’ll see as we do the process and I use a different language. People are often looking for like the magic script for the thing. So it’s like, “Okay, so give me the magic words,” and when I use the magic words and the magic tapping, it’s going to equal handling this issue.

It’s important to be specific on the feelings, the emotions, the events, the memories, sort of the story around what’s happening. When you do that, that’s when you allow the body to heal. That’s when you take out the negative emotional charge. So if someone says, to be very general, someone’s like, “I had back pain and I want to use it for back pain,” I’m more interested in not saying even though I have back pain and tapping on back pain, back pain, back pain, I’m interested in saying, “How do you feel about the back pain? What is the emotion in the back pain?” When we look at our bodies asking that question, if there was an emotion in this part of the body, if there was an emotion in this diagnosis, in this disease and in this thing, what would it be?

And why don’t we play with that and get into some tapping because I think, you know, let’s give people an early experience and we can just like, you know.

18:34 CL: Yeah, absolutely. So one question kind of comes up. I’ve experienced this as well. We were like, I don’t even know how I’m feeling about it because sometimes you could be feeling anger but underneath anger is sadness. Does it help kind of uncover the true emotions, like you could literally go, the way I’m feeling about it is I’m feeling numb about it, I have no emotions about it and then will it help sort of uncover.

NO: One hundred percent. Yeah, great question. A great question. You’ll see. Some people, we’ll start tapping on the side of the hand and they start sobbing because it just unlocks something, because we’re just taking that moment to say okay, this is how I feel, we’re relaxing the body, we’re allowing you to experience these emotions and let them go. We’re not doing this to live in these emotions and we’re not doing it to be angry or be sad. We focus on the negative or the truth because we want to fire that amygdala. We want to run that pattern in the brain and the body then do the tapping to sort of counteract and turn off that pattern.

19:44 CL: This is the big question that I know comes up all the time. “Why are you talking about negative? I don’t want to talk about the negative.”

NO: Yeah, great question. So the person who said it best – and I just repeat what you told me – Louise Hay, who a lot of people might know, the founder of Hay House, she passed away sadly a few weeks ago just before her 91st birthday. But she had a great run and an incredible influence in the world. We were talking about tapping and she is sort of the queen of affirmations. She’s one of the founders of this movement of positive thinking. I said, “Louis, what are you doing saying this negative stuff? We’re tapping all these negative things.” She looks at me very sweetly and she said, “Honey, if you want to clean a house, you have to see the dirt.”

And that, I think about every day. I talk about it in every interview because that’s why we’re looking at the negative. We’re just seeing the dirt. We’re just saying, “you know what, I look over in the corner of this room, there’s some dirt. I’m going to clean it up.” Then it’s clean, it’s not like we’re going to live in the dirt. We’re not going to roll around in the dirt. We are acknowledging this is the truth of how I feel in order to clean it. And what’s so powerful about tapping is that we can actually let it go. A lot of times we bury our emotions because we don’t want to feel them, and it’s understandable. If you’re sad and frustrated and overwhelmed and if you’ve been trying to get pregnant and if you’re just sick of the whole thing and you don’t want to feel any emotions around it, that’s when you use the word “numb” before, right? That’s when we just go numb, like we just block it all out. We’re bringing these up in order to process them through our body and let them go.

21:18 CL: Because a lot of people say, oh, you should be positive and keep it positive, and positive thinking. So people think, “Oh, I shouldn’t talk about this negative stuff.” The negative stuff is going on in your head. I mean, be truthful about it.

NO: Be truthful. That’s it. So just see the dirt and then be positive. And you’ll know the difference because then you could talk when that positive is forced like, “You know, I really believe that things are going to get better and they’re for a reason,” and you’re just like, “ugh,” you’re grinding inside.

21:47 CL: Yes, like you’re not convincing anyone with that dialogue. But yeah, okay. So, are we doing a tapping session?

NO: Yeah, let’s do it. I’m going to do some general tapping and we’ll see how it unfolds.

22:02 CL: Sounds good.

NO: All right. So everyone listening, if you’re in a car, probably good to pull over because you’re going to want two hands for this. And wherever you are in the world, just take a few moments and you can just close your eyes and take a deep breath. Just in this moment tune into your body. If you’re listening to this podcast, it’s likely because you’ve been struggling with some infertility, some challenges in your body and when you tune in, you might feel some discomfort, some stress, some anxiety, some fear. Just take a moment to notice that. If you have any pain in your body, you can focus on that. Then I want you to think about your journey. Whatever it is for you, whatever reason there is for you listening to this podcast, if you’ve struggled to get pregnant, if you’ve gone through years of struggle or months of struggle, or something just came up and you want to learn more about it. Whatever it is, whatever reasons, just bring that to mind.

And as you think about all the specific challenges, all the things that have come up, just see how you feel in your body. Maybe there’s some anxiety, maybe there’s fear. Maybe you’re just overwhelmed or numb. Or maybe there’s grief and sadness. Just acknowledge that now.

And if you’ve had a lot going on, see if you can just hone it with all these feelings coming up on one feeling or one event or one memory. Whatever comes up, just allow it to be. So it can be a feeling of sadness in your heart or you can be thinking about something your doctor told you six months ago that you just can’t stop thinking about. A prognosis or diagnosis that just feels stuck. Just pick one thing. And when you think about it, when you focus on it, give it a number of intensity on a scale of 0 to 10, 10 being the most intense. Again, we’re seeing the dirt in order to clear it.

And when you’re ready, you can gently open your eyes and we’ll tap together. I’ll describe the points, if you’re listening on the podcast, don’t worry. And don’t worry about getting it perfect. However you do it, it’s going to be great. It’s not a magic science if you’re off by half an inch on one point. You’ll figure it out. You can check back on the videos or look up the points later.

So we start by tapping on the side of the hand. It’s called the karate chop point. We want to take four fingers of one hand and tap on the other hand on the outside of the hand below the pinky. It’s the meaty part of the hand. And we’re just tapping continuously and then you can repeat after me. You can say this out loud, you can say it in your mind, whatever feels comfortable for you.

And Charlene, would you like to be my echo on this?

25:02 CL: Absolutely.

NO: All right. So tapping on the side of the hand focusing on that issue that we were just bringing up and repeat after me. Even though I’m holding on to all of the stress…

25:13 CL: Even though I’m holding on to all the stress…

NO: I choose to relax and feel safe now.

25:18 CL: I choose to relax and feel safe now.

NO: We’re going to do that two more times, still tapping on the side of the hand. Even though I’m holding on so tight…

25:27 CL: Even though I’m holding on so tight…

NO: To all the stress and anxiety…

25:31 CL: To all the stress and anxiety…

NO: I choose to relax and feel safe now.

25:36 CL: I choose to relax and feel safe now.

NO: And again, still on the side of the hand. Even though I’m holding on so tight…

25:42 CL: Even though I’m holding on so tight…

NO: I love, accept and forgive myself.

25:47 CL: I love, accept and forgive myself.

NO: And now we’re going to tap through the points. The first point is the eyebrow point. It’s on the inside of the eyebrow right where the hair ends and it meets the nose. You can take two fingers of one hand, the other hand, or both hands. The meridians run down both sides of the body and you’re just tapping gently and just repeat after me. This stress…

26:10 CL: This stress.

NO: Now we go to the side of the eye. It’s not at the temple, right next to the eye on the bone. Again, one side or both sides, being present to these feelings and you could just say out loud. This stressful issue…

26:24 CL: This stressful issue.

NO: And now under the eye right on the bone again, one side or both sides. This stressful issue…

26:34 CL: This stressful issue.

NO: And now we go under the nose right on the bone. This anxiety in my body…

26:42 CL: This anxiety in my body…

NO: And now the next point is underneath the mouth, it’s above the chin, below the lip and that little crease in there that you can take two fingers. And you’re not counting or tapping perfectly. You’re just tapping along focusing on this issue and you can just say out loud “All this stress…”

27:00 CL: All this stress…

NO: The next point is the collarbone point. Just feel for the two little bones of the collarbone and you go down an inch out to each side, about an inch you can tap with all 10 fingers of both hands. Make sure to get the points. Focusing on this stressful issue, just say “This stress…”

27:18 CL: This stress…

NO: Two points left, the next one is underneath the armpit right on the bra line for women, three inches underneath the armpit, either side of the body. This stressful issue…

27:30 CL: This stressful issue.

NO: And now the last point at the top of the head right on the crown you can take five fingers, tap around, “This stressful issue…”

27:39 CL: This stressful issue…

NO: All right. Now let’s go back to the eyebrow point. That was the basic round. We’re going to do a couple more rounds focusing in even deeper on this stress. So just tap on that eyebrow point and I want you to just start thinking about what you were stressed out about and what you are stressed out about. Now go to the side of the eye, bring to mind these images. Your journey – what’s been going on, what are you so worried about, what are you stressed about? What are the things that have happened that are just so frustrating and make you angry or sad or overwhelmed? Think these thoughts now, under the eye.

28:28 CL: So people could be saying to themselves like “I’m scared I’ll never become a mom.”

NO: Perfect. Right? Like anything. And Charlene, why don’t you say some of those things? Because you know better than I do. So I’ll move through the points and say the thoughts that people have, so we can just prompt them. And everyone’s having their own journey, so think about yours but just listen to some of those problems. So let’s go under the nose.

28:53 CL: I’ll just repeat with other people, you know, “I feel broken. What if I never get to become a mom?”

NO: Under the mouth. So just think of that thought. “What if I never get to become a mom?” and feel the charge in your body and the stress that fires right when you have that thought. And then just notice the tapping starts to calm in down. Collarbone.

29:15 CL: “What if my marriage can’t survive this?”

NO: Bringing up all these feelings, being present to them. And we’re bringing up a lot at once and that’s okay. Think about what feels safe and comfortable in this moment, knowing that as you think these thoughts, as you feel these feelings, you’re actually letting them go. Underneath the arm.

29:38 CL: “I can’t go to another baby shower.”

NO: Feel all the feelings that come with that thought, all the stress and anxiety and the overwhelm. See how they’ve been stuck in your body and how you’re starting to let them go. Top of the head.

29:49 CL: “I hate looking at Facebook. I can’t see another birth announcement.”

NO: Be present to that thought and anything that it brings up for you. All that overwhelm, all that fear, all that anxiety. Just watch it fade away. Eyebrow.

30:14 CL: “Why is this happening to me? I’m so pissed off.”